The Way He Kisses Me
by mosylu
Summary: When Hermione spills a detail of her relationship with Ron, she completely flabbergasts the Gryffindor girlsuntil they see for themselves what she means. Got fluff?


  


The Way He Kisses Me

  


_(A/N) Warning! Radioactive and possibly fatal levels of fluff ahead. Proceed at your own risk. _

"And then he'll sort of--stick his tongue in!"

Parvati burst into a gale of giggles, rolling around the bed. "Lavender! He doesn't!"

"He does!"

"And what else?"

"Wouldn't you like to know . . ." The sixth-year Gryffindor girls were discussing the various methods of kissing, and Lavender had just regaled them with a blow-by-blow description of exactly how Seamus Finnegan kissed. She turned to the one bed that wasn't pouring forth scandalized laughter, and caroled, "Your turn, Hermione!"

Hermione looked up from her homework and gazed at her blankly. "My turn for what?"

"To spill," Parvati announced. "Come on, now--how does that skinny redhead of yours kiss?"

Predictably, Hermione pokered up. "I'm not telling you that," she said, "that's very private!"

"Oh, really! You were listening to us!"

"I was not!"

"Your quill didn't move _once_ all during the description."

"It's late; we don't have time."

The shouts came from all over the dormitory.

"Oh, come on!"

"Surely you can give us a little hint? Just one?"

"You've been going out with Ron Weasley for a year, and you haven't shared _anything!_"

"Don't hold out on us!"

"Enquiring minds want to know!"

Hermione sat up, carefully putting away her parchment. "Very well," she said, flicking her hair over her shoulder. "I'll say one thing."

She didn't say it right away; instead, she flipped aside her covers and got under them, but didn't pull them up.

"Come on!" someone shouted. "Stop making a production of it!"

Hermione smoothed the covers over her knees. "He kisses," she said, "like he's laughing." She gave them a mysterious little smile over her shoulder and slid down under her covers. "Good night."

  


* * *

  


For the rest of the week, puzzled eyes followed Hermione all over the school, and they focused especially hard when she was with Ron Weasley. _Kisses like he's laughing?_ the owners of these eyes asked themselves. _What the heck is she _talking_ about?_

"She just wanted to drive us mad," Lavender told Parvati, slouching down deep into her seat in History of Magic. "She didn't have the foggiest idea of what she was talking about. She made it all up." 

Lavender was miffed because Hermione's disclosure (which she had never expected to be quite so dramatic, or mysterious) had completely overshadowed her own. Who cared that Seamus French-kissed her? All anyone wanted to know was how Ron Weasley could kiss like he was laughing.

Parvati, the traitor, was looking thoughtful. "Angelina Johnson told me last year that Fred Weasley was an absolutely fantastic kisser."

"Did she say anything about laughing?"

"No."

"There you are then. Hermione made the entire thing up."

It was the most raging debate since the Yule Ball who'll-ask-who issue in fourth year. Someone went so far as to ask Harry Potter about it.

"How would _I _know?" said the Gryffindor Seeker, sounding absolutely appalled. "We don't talk about stuff like that!"

Ginny Weasley, when she heard about it (the debate spread, ripple-like, backwards and forwards through Gryffindor Tower) said, "Don't ask _me_. That's disgusting. He's my _brother! Yech!"_

They were so busy arguing about it in Herbology on Friday afternoon that Professor Sprout made them all stay behind for a good scolding. Hermione Granger was the only Gryffindor girl who left on time, hand-in-hand with Ron Weasley.

In posession of a mass detention, they left a few minutes later, and with Lavender and Parvati in front, they mooched along back to the castle, still debating. 

All of a sudden, Parvati stopped dead, and Lavender (who had been loudly proclaiming that Hermione had conjured up the whole thing out of pixie dust) plowed into her back. There was a minor domino effect as the girls stopped. 

"What is it?"

"What's going on?"

"Let's get back; I'm hungry!"

"_Look_," Parvati said softly.

Up ahead, in the shadows of the trees, were a couple of Gryffindors. Their hair--brilliant orange and bushy brown--made it obvious which couple they were, and it was equally obvious what they were doing.

Even as they watched, open-mouthed, he wrapped his arms around her middle and hoisted her up in the air, spinning them both around a couple of times before letting her back down again and dipping his head.

"Like . . . like he's _laughing . . ."_

He was kissing her like it was the best fun he'd ever had in his life, and that _included_ Quidditch (although, as a peevish Lavender said later, he was a Weasley so you never could quite tell on that score). He kissed her like he could go on doing it forever quite happily, with only occasional breaks to eat. He kissed like it was an outpouring of _joie de vivre_, an impulsive, joyous moment where you had to do something or you'd just burst--you had to dance or sing or yell at the top of your lungs, just for the hell of it.

In short--he kissed like he was laughing.

Completely deflated, the Gryffindor girls headed back to the tower. The worst thing about it, all the single girls (and many of those who weren't) moaned to themselves, was that Hermione had gotten Ron over a year ago, and she wasn't about to let him go any time soon. 

For that matter, a few of the more perceptive girls realized, neither would he let her go.

  


* * *

  


"You planned that, didn't you?"

"Planned what? I don't know _what_ you're talking about."

"You do _too_--why else would you have just grabbed me and kissed me out in the open like this, when you're always making me wait until you're sure nobody's around?"

"If you _must_ know, they were asking some extremely impertinent questions the other night, and I felt like taking them down a peg."

"Hunh. You're not going to tell me what this had to do with anything, are you?"

"No, of course not."

A snort of laughter. "C'mere."


End file.
